Jo McDougall

I highly recommend this vivid, accessible collection, where poems are sometimes just two lines long (but the are THE PERFECT two lines), and ordinary things are "bright as raspberries". As a fellow audience member at a McDougall reading said, McDougall's poems emobody "the soul of brevity". And I would put the emphasis on the "soul".

"McDougall gives voice to the ineffable emotions of plain people. And in the undiluted glare of the genuine, the land and its people are redeemed, if not wholly forgiven." -- The Georgia Review

"Without fanfare -- and fanfare would be in order -- Jo McDougall has created a small but solid corpus of poetry that is both unique and uniquely American....Gathered together in 'the hasty tent' of our life, we are, for a moment, something other than ourselves, not earth but air. Call it magic, call it art: either way, McDougall's poetry is something like a miracle."
--The Hollins Critic